Dwarfs Take Disney on Wild Ride
(St. Petersburg Times) -- Are the Seven Dwarfs secretly running Walt Disney Corp.? Sure seems that way. Almost everything Disney touches lately seems to suffer from, uh, diminished stature.
· Grumpy is obviously in charge of Disney's stock. Company shares earlier this week hit a low -- $13.85, down 44 percent since May -- not seen since 1995. Even in the post-Sept. 11 trauma, when tourists did not travel to theme parks, Disney's stock never fell below $16.98.
· Sleepy must head the programming of Disney-owned ABC. The TV network with dud ratings can't gener-ate its own hits. This week, Disney bit the ego bullet and said that cable giant HBO -- a unit of media rival AOL Time Warner -- will develop new shows for ABC over the next two years.
· Sneezy rules Disney's creative team, historically one of the company's gems but now a group that's grown allergic to bringing new and exciting ideas to fruition. When was the last time you saw a crowd in one of Disney's retail stores?
· Bashful chairs Disney's 16-member board of directors, long considered one of America's most conflicted, least independent and least assertive boardrooms of any major public company.
· Happy heads Disney's struggling theme parks. He's happy only because Doc is administering calming medications.
· Above them all, trying to revive this flagging entertainment enterprise, is Dopey.
It's been a long, lone time since we heard any of these Disney dwarfs whistling while they worked. To be sure, Disney is hardly the only entertainment conglomerate struggling these days. And not all is down at Disney. After little to brag about, the company's film studio just got a much-needed lift from the opening weekend of Signs, the new thriller that sold an estimated $60.3-million in tickets. Last Friday, Disney bowed to pressure and said it will cut the size of its board of directors and take other overdue steps to strengthen its corporate governance. And Disney is in early negotiations to build a theme park in Shanghai to reach the huge, relatively untapped Chinese market. But are these events enough to slow Disney's downhill ride? The threat of terrorism after Sept. 11 hurt theme park attendance, but Disney indicated earlier this year that tourism seemed to be bouncing back. Not so. Last week, Disney said attendance at its theme parks, which provide about a quarter of the company's total income, was off by about 6 percent in the quarter. If terrorism scared people into staying home, the struggling economy -- and a theme park entrance fee topping $50 -- is keeping more of them away. Competition is Disney's other theme park worry. An article in the new issue of Newsweek describes "The Bat-tle for Orlando" this way: "Disney's theme-park empire is under attack from Universal, its crosstown rival. Teens are the target. Can Spider-Man topple Cinderella?" The magazine reveals Universal has even shot (but not yet had the nerve to use) a TV commercial with a fake Mickey walking up to Universal Studios and saying, "I want to see what I've been missing." Can Disney be fixed? If so, how much will the repairs cost? The stock market currently values Disney at less than $30-billion, a number diminished enough to make us all Grumpy.
(St. Petersburg Times) -- Are the Seven Dwarfs secretly running Walt Disney Corp.? Sure seems that way. Almost everything Disney touches lately seems to suffer from, uh, diminished stature.
· Grumpy is obviously in charge of Disney's stock. Company shares earlier this week hit a low -- $13.85, down 44 percent since May -- not seen since 1995. Even in the post-Sept. 11 trauma, when tourists did not travel to theme parks, Disney's stock never fell below $16.98.
· Sleepy must head the programming of Disney-owned ABC. The TV network with dud ratings can't gener-ate its own hits. This week, Disney bit the ego bullet and said that cable giant HBO -- a unit of media rival AOL Time Warner -- will develop new shows for ABC over the next two years.
· Sneezy rules Disney's creative team, historically one of the company's gems but now a group that's grown allergic to bringing new and exciting ideas to fruition. When was the last time you saw a crowd in one of Disney's retail stores?
· Bashful chairs Disney's 16-member board of directors, long considered one of America's most conflicted, least independent and least assertive boardrooms of any major public company.
· Happy heads Disney's struggling theme parks. He's happy only because Doc is administering calming medications.
· Above them all, trying to revive this flagging entertainment enterprise, is Dopey.
It's been a long, lone time since we heard any of these Disney dwarfs whistling while they worked. To be sure, Disney is hardly the only entertainment conglomerate struggling these days. And not all is down at Disney. After little to brag about, the company's film studio just got a much-needed lift from the opening weekend of Signs, the new thriller that sold an estimated $60.3-million in tickets. Last Friday, Disney bowed to pressure and said it will cut the size of its board of directors and take other overdue steps to strengthen its corporate governance. And Disney is in early negotiations to build a theme park in Shanghai to reach the huge, relatively untapped Chinese market. But are these events enough to slow Disney's downhill ride? The threat of terrorism after Sept. 11 hurt theme park attendance, but Disney indicated earlier this year that tourism seemed to be bouncing back. Not so. Last week, Disney said attendance at its theme parks, which provide about a quarter of the company's total income, was off by about 6 percent in the quarter. If terrorism scared people into staying home, the struggling economy -- and a theme park entrance fee topping $50 -- is keeping more of them away. Competition is Disney's other theme park worry. An article in the new issue of Newsweek describes "The Bat-tle for Orlando" this way: "Disney's theme-park empire is under attack from Universal, its crosstown rival. Teens are the target. Can Spider-Man topple Cinderella?" The magazine reveals Universal has even shot (but not yet had the nerve to use) a TV commercial with a fake Mickey walking up to Universal Studios and saying, "I want to see what I've been missing." Can Disney be fixed? If so, how much will the repairs cost? The stock market currently values Disney at less than $30-billion, a number diminished enough to make us all Grumpy.